Yo…

Leaving high school makes it difficult to pass notes to a girl you fancy.You can’t approach a cute lass in the supermarket with a note that says: WANNA GO TO THE SPRING FLING? above a Yes checkbox and a No checkbox. It…doesn’t work.So it’s either this or Tinder. I know…we all know: online dating…is not a life hack.I’m just tired of that awkward feeling when your married friends forget you’re single and say “out there” like it’s a horror movie.

So this is who I am; just as God made me. Mr. Rogers thinks I’m special but he doesn’t seem to grade on a curve.

Cooking Skillz: Tea and Cereal

Pet Peeves: Surprise parties

Random Fun Fact: I’m left-hand which for a period in the late 80s was medically considered to be a mild form of retardation. Umm: I’m ok and bright and social. I can also successfully dress and feed myself.

Ideal First Date: High Tea followed by an NBA game: some classy mixed with some lowbrow entertainment…you’ll instantly score a second date if your heckling is high quality: during either event.

Message Me If…You believe ninjas are cooler than cowboys.

You think it’s strange for all his technological acumen it’s bizarre visionary director James Cameron believes the only way to time travel is naked.

You’re open to debating if the 5 Second Rules applies when you’re in a hot tub…

You recognize All Day Breakfast is one of the sweetest English phrases up there with No Pants Parties and Free Food.

A Throwback Thursday (well Throwback Tuesday) from 2019 a year which feels like decades ago and last week all at the same time.I’ve recorded over 250 My Summer Lair episodes and sometimes it can be difficult to give enough spotlight to a theme or a topic before going onto the next episode. So periodically in this newsletter-space I’ll return to those overlooked gems.At Hot Docs 2019 I was fortunate to check out The Pickup Game co-directed by Barnaby O’Connor and Matthew O’Connor. I was curious about this alien world of pickup artists. Does it work? Is this a perv thing? Is it all bad or is there some overlooked good?I’m curious; first I need to understand that world and the myriad motivations involved. I can’t just blindly dismiss it based on a shallow yet popular narrative. This restless curiosity is why a large chunk of My Summer Lair episodes are documentaries. Show me what’s going on.

So I parachuted into the world of pickup artists:

Before the documentary I’d read The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists by investigative reporter Neil Strauss published in 2005. And what attracted me to a book about dudes learning how to pick up women was…magic.Pickup artists use magic among other techniques branded as Chick Crack to engage women; sometimes the magic is…well magical and it effectively seduces women. How “there’s a quarter behind your ear…” is sexy I cannot understand.

And while pickup artists are often lazily charged with misogyny Neil Strauss’ The Game revealed something sadder:“The point was women; the result was men. Instead of models in bikinis lounging by the Project Hollywood pool all day, we had pimply teenagers, bespectacled businessmen, tubby students, lonely millionaires, struggling actors, frustrated taxi drivers, and computer programmers—lots of computer programmers.”This is loneliness.Tinder was created for the same reason Netflix succeeds. Nobody wanted to go the video store and strike out, come home empty handed or worse with something that wasn’t their first choice. All that disappointment and risk simply wasn’t worth pants. Tinder and Netflix eliminated friction while offering bountiful choices.Search for free love and never leave your couch.

So what do you do? We learn to adapt. We have new things now. We have things like online dating. One in five relationships is formed online now. That’s a true statistic.I have a friend, he met his wife on one of those sites and I asked him, I was like, “So, what’d you search?” ‘Cause that’s weirdly romantic. He types in this phrase, all these algorithms and things come together, this woman’s face comes up, he clicks it… that becomes the woman he spends the rest of his life with.So I asked him, “What’d you search?” And he goes, “Jewish and my zip code.” “What, that’s all you were looking for, “just something Jewish close by?! “You don’t want to drive too far?! “Proximity was a big factor here?! “Jewish and my zip– “I found a Wendy’s that way a few weeks ago! “I typed Wendy’s and my zip code then I got some nuggets, he got a wife the exact same way!”~ Aziz Ansari: Buried Alive (2013)

Yes men can be pigs (often) and women can be obtuse (often) and yet a successful connection between the sexes is not naturally gonna spark.A common dominator in many #MeToo stories was…dudes have no game. Any female on a dating app constantly deleting dick pic greetings know this. And while we can enjoy funny teen comedies about the lack of game eventually those jokes stop being funny as a guy gets older.

I went into the 2019 documentary on pickup artists holding onto these insights while (this is a strange leap) also thinking about Mother Teresa. MT had a constant refrain about loneliness in America. One of her famous quotes was: “In the West there is a loneliness, which I call the leprosy of the West. In many ways, it is worse than our poor in Calcutta.”Yo, son.

And sure enough the documentary featured smarmy hustlers. The pickup game is a billion-dollar self-help industry no different than other late night infomercials about losing weight, gaining wealth through real estate according to a heavily accented immigrant on a yacht, and knives that cut through anything.

With hidden camera footage instructors in the documentary break down proven techniques to effectively seduce women. Some of it was worthless pop psychology as if women uniformly operated like The Borg and some of it was…well common sense.

You don’t apply for one job and wait; you apply for many jobs at the same time and sort through the offers you get. Ignoring the rejections. Same principle applies to dating, reject the rejections and keep “applying for jobs.” That’s…logical? Ask 10 girls out, at least 1 is bound to say “eh…sure why not?”

The 2019 documentary and the 2005 book paint a sad portrait of life in Western society. Yes shallow people do shallow things (and can even thrive thanks to social media…) and worse…their actions create damage and breed toxicity. Lastly yes there is a hunger for love…to be loved and to love and that hunger is large enough it creates a viable market where counterfeit goods are sold and bought.

This isn’t contempt or even a defense of these individuals. It’s sorrow for all involved: the men and the women. Isn’t there a better way? Turns out…there is.

My guest in the attached interview is not the documentary’s directors but rather a love coach! Minnie Lane is a Dating, Attraction and Connection Coach. I wish I’d done a better job with this interview.

In sports you get a coach to draw up key plays and to reflect on last night’s game and what you could have done better. What mistakes did you make? Was your strategy effective? In sports a coach is valuable so why not have a coach in love?

That’s wild.

And yet frustrating as well: we needlessly amplify misleading narratives about pickup artists as if that was a common concrete truth. When instead we could be exploring and augmenting alternatives that better benefit lots of individuals. By pimping the indolent narratives we’ve short changed individuals who could use a Connection Coach…or taste the tangy relief of healing so they enter into their next relationship less broken.

Between Connection Coaches and pickup artists there are whole worlds out there operating with their own rules. And My Summer Lair allows me to a be a tourist. It’s a pretty good gig. You could say…especially today on Valentine’s Day: I Love It.

More Throwback Tuesday…here’s the old couples from When Harry Met Sally. Not a Pickup Artist in the bunch…all Meet Cutes.

Excellent rom-com; outstanding soundtrack.

Spicy Chicken Wings Make My Heart Burn…Sammy Younan-28-

Sammy Younan is the affable host of My Summer Lair podcast: think NPR’s Fresh Air meets Kevin Smith: interviews & impressions on Pop Culture.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mypalsammy.substack.com